Report says Chula Vista police short on 'proactive time'

Katherine Poythress

Patrol officers in the Chula Vista Police Department don’t get enough time to do activities that help prevent crime, according to a personnel report to the City Council on Tuesday.

An independent review conducted this year found that the police department’s patrol officers have about 22 percent of “proactive time” available, compared with the 40 percent recommended by law enforcement experts.

A plan to improve that statistic could cost the city $80,000 more than it budgeted for next year.

The city hired the Palo Alto-based Matrix Consulting Group in January for an amount not to exceed $75,000 to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the department’s personnel and operations. The result so far is a report amounting to more than 100 pages.

“As you know, our police department has been very successful,” City Manager Jim Sandoval said. “We were named the best police department station in the country, and our crime rate has dropped significantly. The national crime rate is on a decline, that’s certainly true here. That said, the police department budget is also the largest budget in the city, and we want to make sure they’re funded and equipped in the most expeditious and efficient way, going forward.”

Matrix Project Coordinator Greg Mathews said the group uses “proactive time” as the primary metric for determining how efficient and effective police departments are. He defined proactive time as the amount of time that is left after patrol officers perform their primary administrative duties.

“It’s that free time left over after responding to calls for officers to essentially perform other duties,” he said, and it impacts a police department’s response time to calls for service, and its ability to consistently and effectively participate in crime prevention activities.

To get its data, the consulting group conducted one-on-one interviews with police personnel, conducted a survey and analyzed an assortment of documents and personnel records.

“You would have to hire approximately 20 new officers to improve proactive time to the desired level, if staffing is all you looked at,” he told the City Council. “But of course there are other things that can be done to help improve it.”

His primary recommendations for the Chula Vista Police Department are:

• Ensure residential and business building alarms are validated before responding

• Hire more patrol officers

Police Chief David Bejarano told the council that the quality of the analysis in this report is among the highest he has seen in 30 years of law enforcement. He presented a plan that included hiring two new officers, implementing a new shift schedule, responding only to verified burglary alarms, revising dispatch protocols and patrol guidelines and establishing performance objectives for dispatch operations.

Bejarano said that based on the plan, the department would be up to 38 percent proactive time in fiscal year 2013, and 43 percent in 2014.

Some of the items mentioned are in the city manager’s budget proposal for next year. About $80,000 worth of them are not. Councilman Steve Castaneda said he needs to see a copy of the report before he can make an informed decision on the recommendations.

“I understand the methodology and everything you have come up with, but I’d like to see the full report,” he told Bejarano.

“We as a council have worked hard to be very disciplined in our expenses and be careful not to dip into spending more than we have,” she said. “Thank you, chief, for being willing to seize this opportunity of having an outside expert come in and say, ‘If you did it this way, things just might be better.”

The report shared on Tuesday is the first of two. The second phase of the review process will begin in June. The city manager said that although he hadn’t counted on an additional $80,000 request, he is open to discussing it with council members at a budget workshop Thursday.

“From my perspective, this is a matter of public safety and is something that should be supported,” Sandoval said.